Introductions (1)

Hello! Welcome to my blog on hydropolitics in Africa. In this post, I outline future themes that will be explored in this blog centered on hydropolitics and transboundary conflicts in the Nile River Basin. A further aim of this blog post, and undoubtedly more important than previewing its content, is to establish and critically discuss the myriad links between Western empire and continued difficulties to secure safe and equitable water access for all in the Nile River Basin. It is particularly because of the legacy of Western domination in this region, both through direct and indirect means, that people in the Nile River Basin continue to face extreme economic hardships, food insecurity, and reduced safe water access. While a complete discussion of the history of colonialism in the region exceeds the scope of this blog post, my intention is to briefly touch on the role academia has played in the hegemonic relationship between Europe and Africa. 

Western discourses, produced both inside and outside the academy, have historically been tools of cultural power, effectively eroticizing Africa against a tame and civilized Europe (Said 1978). These discourses have been used to justify a European racial and cultural superiority from which the dominance of Africa appears to be merely logical. Within academia, geography is particularly culpable for this power imbalance since geographic knowledge was an early and essential tool for the expansion of Western empire on the continent. 

Decolonization, an idea that has increased in power and salience in recent years, is a welcome development in comparison to the imperial tradition of Western knowledge production (Mbembe, 2019). However, true justice for the exploited peoples and regions of the world (whose exploitation the academy has benefited from both materially and immaterially) requires more than just lip-service, the performance of allyship, in which decolonial discourse is recuperated and consequentially pacified by an academy fundamentally uninterested in dismantling the structural conditions of racism (Phillips, 2020). A true decolonial approach to writing on Africa would critique not only knowledge itself but also the structural conditions—the institutions—that produce that knowledge. If the academy is to play an active role in accelerating justice for the developing world (and this blog, too, is responsible for meeting that burden), it must be reimagined to its very core. In order to meaningfully write on Africa, scholars in the West must discard cheap and passing allyship in exchange for a deeper commitment to justice that demands that the scholar exerts their privilege, both inside and outside of the institutions they exist in, even if it comes with no tangible reward (Phillips, 2020). 

Such a goal is easier to imagine in theory than in practice. What does it mean for this blog? First, this blog commits to centering African academics who have been devoted to the work of justice for much longer than their European counterparts. Their localized knowledge has long been ignored or overlooked. Second, when writing about Africa, this blog will be specific, cognizant of the trap of representing a complex and diverse continent in generalizations. Third, this blog will be constantly aware that it is being authored from a point of extreme privilege, liable to the various limitations of writing about the hydropolitics of the Nile River Basin, from London, by a writer who has never worried about their water access.

With those ground rules set, let us begin exploring the focus of this blog. 60 transboundary rivers exist in Africa which provide water for up to 75% of the population (Melesse et al, 2011). This blog focuses on specifically the Nile River Basin, a vast region that affects primarily eleven countries—Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. Roughly 238 million people live within the basin, of which 172 million are primarily rural (Kimenya & Mbaku, 2015). In this blog, we will investigate the intricate flows of power that bind water access in the Nile River Basin, asking the questions of who gets access to water, and for what reason? Central to this line of inquiry is the power relationship between the urban and rural, particularly considering the Nile River Basin is the site of intense urbanization, as well as jockeying between states through riparian agreements.

The Nile River Basin (Source: Allan et al, 2019)

The Nile River is a shared resource for the countries that rely on it, and demand has only increased in recent years with a rise in human population, irrigated land, damming, an increase in water pollution, and the multitude affects of climate change (Allan et al, 2019). We will explore the future of this commons amid a period of rapid population growth beginning with next week's topic: how are multilateral water agreements rooted in colonialism and how can they do more to ensure that the resources of the Nile River basin are equitably shared (Brinkley, 2019)?